You can't keep the Writing Writer away. Having released their first non-concept album, the Color Before the Sun, one would have thought that the days of the Amory Wars, which told of space battles and superpowers, would be a thing of the past. Wrong-o! Progressive rock/heavy metal/alternative rockers Coheed and Cambria are back with their ninth album, which is a) the first of at least two entries in a story, and b) going to be pushing around 78 minutes in length. What does the title mean (because it means something, you know Claudio Sanchez wrote something)? Well, we'll have to wait until October 5th to find out what exactly a Vaxis is.

I'll be completely, honest, Dark Sentencer and Unheavenly Creatures have not hit me as much as previous albums have.

The "hey hey hey" thing that happens in Dark Sentencer is one of those tropes that happens in mainstream rock music that I hate so much. It kind of ruins the awesome guitar lines in the verses for me. That said, the pure cheese of the opening monologue makes me think of Rush's 2112 in a way.

There's a lot of songs that I end up skipping in recent Coheed albums unless I'm in a really specific mood. "You Got Spirit Kid" is one of those, for example. Unheavenly Creatures feels like it's gonna be one of those for me. The chiptune-ish synth line is cool, but it feels so divorced from the rest of the song, like it's not actually connected to the track itself, you know?

Well, I couldn't go see CoCa in Tampa Saturday but I think the whole show is up on YouTube and they sound as amazing as ever.

This was the 6th time I've seen them and it was easily the worst one. Not their fault, but you didn't miss much. The venue was bad with really lovely sound. The bands before them were terrible. They played a short set due to co-headlining with TBS (LOL) and Tampa's noise ordinance (had to be done by 11PM). They hauled rear end off the stage w/o even a goodbye since they didn't want to be fined. Played too many older songs in my opinion. I guess I realize they have to play the old songs to appease the crowd, but it was tired this time (for me). I always leave before Welcome Home I am so sick of the song.

Honestly, I would wait for the album to come out and then wait for more dates. I'm sure they will play more material from the new record.

Just got the CD delivered today (yeah, I'm stuck in my ways), and giving it a listen now. I've gone in entirely blind. I didn't even know this album was coming out until like a month ago thanks to quitting Facebook. Gonna finish listening to it on my drive into work.

After one focused listen, this album feels like it sits somewhere between the Afterman duo and No World for Tomorrow, stylistically. It's definitely nowhere near as aggressively mediocre as The Color Before the Sun was, but it definitely suffers from too many uninspired guitar riffs when compared to their older stuff. Nothing really stuck out to me as being below average, which is good, so I think this one will be easy to come back and listen to even if it doesn't hit some of the highs that really sold me on C&C in the first place.

I really like the album. It's still coheed, but you can feel that they want to move in new ways. Still some good prog rock stuff here and there. In Night Time (if I'm not mistaken) they do the whole second verse of lyrics through a vocoder.

Sometimes
people need a reminder
that Nazis are supposed to be
on the wrong end of the gun.

Shredded Hen

I put off listening to this for like a week and a half for whatever reason, but I'm listening now. It's not anything new for them, but it is them doing what they do well. If you've been a fan for a while, I don't see why you wouldn't like this album (unless you were looking for something dramatically different from them). It's got this instantly recognizable Coheed sound and I dig it.

I only listened to the first half of it maybe a week or two ago and I honestly can't remember a single thing that stood out to me, except the chorus of the single they released a while back. All of their other albums had at least a few songs that grabbed me on the first listen so I'm kinda bleh about going back and finishing this album.
...is this what getting old is? I can't enjoy the new album by my favorite band cuz I'm so jaded?

Edit: I also skipped their Coney Island show to go see a local band in Connecticut that played their first show in years, and when I looked up the set list later I heaved a sigh of relief because there was not a single coheed song I regretted missing. I've seen all the standard songs a billion times at this point and they never seem to play deeper cuts.

21st Cherry boy fucked around with this message at Oct 18, 2018 around 12:07

I've listened through the record probably 5-6 times at this point. I feel that it is weaker than previous offerings and while it does contain some songs with solid prog rock, there are no songs that are pure prog.

Songs I appreciate in no particular order:
Toys
The Gutter
All On Fire
Lucky Stars
Old Flames (I guess)

I've listened to this album a lot recently, and I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's their best since GAIBS4 Volume 1. It's Coheed and Cambria at their best alternative-prog-metal sound that you have to do a Venn diagram for. Everything clicks in my mind.

Also, trying to find out about the eponymous Vaxis, I read an interview with Forbes and found out that this is a pentalogy of albums. The characters on the album art? Vaxis' parents, whom he is using time travel (called it!) to reach out to. Future albums will reveal where this all takes place on the timeline.

Edward Mass fucked around with this message at Dec 5, 2018 around 06:24